French soldiers on the attack from their trench during the battle of Verdun in 1916. Photograph: AFP

This time next year, nations across the globe will begin the centenary commemorations of the first world war – "the great seminal catastrophe" of the 20th century, as the American historian George F Kennan called it. It seems that Britain has chosen a sensible approach: a handful of national and international events, spread out over the four years from 2014 to 2018, supplemented by activities at a local level. By limiting the number of high-profile events, the UK will prevent a "commemoration fatigue" setting in among the population.

But some events are still being discussed: for example, would it make sense to celebrate 8 August 1918? On this day the German army suffered its "black day" and crumbled under pressure on the western front, marking the beginning of the war's final phase. Celebrating this date would contrast with the more solemn commemorations on 11 November, when the war ended.

The first world war is still highly controversial. For many years the prevailing view was that it had been a futile war, in which lions led by donkeys died horrific deaths in the trenches. This view has been challenged, which is good: all countries and their armies fought wars and battles that at the time seemed far from futile to them, and most of the generals were not the half-wits portrayed in Blackadder. In reality the British fought to defend Britain and to preserve the status quo in western Europe; and the German soldiers believed they were fighting a defensive war against a "world of enemies" – a world that German politicians had partly created themselves by clumsy foreign policy. However, it is too easy to put the sole blame on Germany. Yes, Germany's politicians did not act very competently in the years leading up to the war, and without doubt imperial Germany has to take responsibility for the invasion of Belgium. But Russia, Austria-Hungary and France played significant roles; and the Balkan countries were a powder keg waiting to be ignited. Of all the great powers, Britain was probably the least belligerent, and the most honest broker in the July crisis which resulted in war.

Some historians have argued that there were distinct policy and strategy continuities between imperial Germany and its Nazi successor. But this is far too simplistic. Germany before the first world war was a torn country: its constitution offered equal suffrage to every male over 25, which made it one of the most liberal electoral systems in the world. On the other hand, the biggest German state, Prussia, used a voting system which more resembled a feudal state than a leading industrial nation.

Despite this, by no stretch of the imagination was Germany a wholly authoritarian, militarist, and expansionist country or the precursor of a fascist or Nazi state. And German war aims were not genocidal in nature, even subconsciously. In eastern Europe the number of pogroms carried out by the local population against Jews was considerably lower during the German occupation than it had been under the tsarist regime. If Germany had won the war, the world would not have been a better place. But it is debatable whether it would have sunk "into the abyss of a new dark age", as Churchill said after the German invasion of France in 1940.

Education is necessary to move beyond the common understanding of the first world war. It is here that the government should focus its war commemorations. Simply sending representatives from schools to the battlefields of the western front is unlikely to achieve a long-lasting educational effect. Historical and cultural education, framed by language teaching and exchanges with former allies and enemies, could achieve this. International youth camps organised by the Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge – the German equivalent of the War Graves Commission – have been a success over the years, and collaboration between the two bodies would be worthwhile too.

It is also important to remember this was a true world war: it was not only fought on the fields of Flanders and the Somme. But how many in Britain have ever heard of the battle of Gorlice-Tarnów in 1915, in which German and Austrian-Hungarian troops broke through the Russian front line and occupied most of Galicia and the Polish salient? Who knows that in 1918 the middle powers occupied vast areas in the east that almost equalled the territory occupied in the second world war? Who has ever heard of the Carpathian winter campaign of 1914-1915, in which Habsburg forces fought in vain to rescue 130,000 Austrian-Hungarian soldiers trapped by Russian troops in the fortress Przemysl, and which resulted in 600,000 casualties? Who knows that the British forces were the junior partner on the western front pretty much throughout the war – they never held more than a quarter of the front. One and a half million volunteers from the Indian subcontinent served in the "great war", and 850,000 of these went overseas.

One thing should be noted when thinking about international commemoration. In Germany, central and eastern Europe the war is remembered, but it is history: the "great war" is the second world war. The casualties, horrors and pain of this war overshadowed everything that happened before. In 2014, Germany will remember the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of the second world war, and the 70th anniversary of the 20 July 1944 bomb plot that tried to kill Hitler. These events will feature higher on the official list of remembrance than the first world war.

It is right that Britain commemorates the first world war. The losses sustained in the conflict should never be forgotten. And yes, Britain can and should proudly remember that it was part of a victorious alliance that defeated Germany and its allies. But it should also remember the war as a pan-European catastrophe that paved the way for an even worse ordeal 25 years later.